By James Petras, Axis of Logic
Axis of Logic | Wednesday, Dec 28, 2016
Introduction
A coup has been underway to prevent President-Elect Donald Trump from taking office and fulfilling his campaign promise to improve US-Russia relations. This ‘palace coup’ is not a secret conspiracy, but an open, loud attack on the election. The coup involves important US elites, who openly intervene on many levels from the street to the current President, from sectors of the intelligence community, billionaire financiers out to the more marginal ‘leftist’ shills of the Democratic Party.
The build-up for the coup is gaining momentum, threatening to eliminate normal constitutional and democratic constraints. This essay describes the brazen, overt coup and the public operatives, mostly members of the outgoing Obama regime.
The second section describes the Trump’s cabinet appointments and the political measures that the President-Elect has adopted to counter the coup. We conclude with an evaluation of the potential political consequences of the attempted coup and Trump’s moves to defend his electoral victory and legitimacy.
The Coup as ‘Process’
In the past few years Latin America has experienced several examples of the seizure of Presidential power by unconstitutional means, which may help illustrate some of the current moves underway in Washington. These are especially interesting since the Obama Administration served as the ‘midwife’ for these ‘regime changes’.
Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras and Haiti experienced coups, in which the elected Presidents were ousted through a series of political interventions orchestrated by economic elites and their political allies in Congress and the Judiciary.
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton were deeply involved in these operations as part of their established foreign policy of ‘regime change’. Indeed, the ‘success’ of the Latin American coups has encouraged sectors of the US elite to attempt to prevent President-elect Trump from taking office in January.
While similarities abound, the on-going coup against Trump in the United States occurs within a very different power configuration of proponents and antagonists.
Firstly, this coup is not against a standing President, but targets an elected president set to take office on January 20, 2017. Secondly, the attempted coup has polarized leading sectors of the political and economic elite. It even exposes a seamy rivalry within the intelligence-security apparatus, with the political appointees heading the CIA involved in the coup and the FBI supporting the incoming President Trump and the constitutional process. Thirdly, the evolving coup is a sequential process, which will build momentum and then escalate very rapidly.
NOW OBAMA ADDS TO HIS ALREADY FOUL RESUME AS A WAR CRIMINAL, THAT OF A PUTSCHIST President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton were deeply involved in Latin American destabilizations as part of their established foreign policy of ‘regime change’. Indeed, the ‘success’ of the Latin American coups has encouraged sectors of the US elite to attempt to prevent President-elect Trump from taking office in January.
Coup-makers depend on the ‘Big Lie’ as their point of departure – accusing President-Elect Trump of 1) being a Kremlin stooge, attributing his electoral victory to Russian intervention against his Democratic Party opponent, Hillary Clinton and 2) blatant voter fraud in which the Republican Party prevented minority voters from casting their ballot for Secretary Clinton.
The first operatives to emerge in the early stages of the coup included the marginal-left Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein, who won less than 1% of the vote, as well as the mass media.
In the wake of her resounding defeat, Candidate Stein usurped authority from the national Green Party and rapidly raked in $8 million dollars in donations from Democratic Party operatives and George Soros-linked NGO’s (many times the amount raised during her Presidential campaign). This dodgy money financed her demand for ballot recounts in selective states in order to challenge Trump’s victory. The recounts failed to change the outcome, but it was a ‘first shot across the bow’, to stop Trump. It became a propaganda focus for the neo-conservative mass media to mobilize several thousand Clintonite and liberal activists.
The purpose was to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s electoral victory. However, Jill Stein’s $8 million dollar shilling for Secretary Clinton paled before the oncoming avalanche of mass media and NGO propaganda against Trump. Their main claim was that anonymous ‘Russian hackers’ and not the American voters had decided the US Presidential election of November 2016!
The ‘Big Lie’ was repeated and embellished at every opportunity by the print and broadcast media. The ‘experts’ were trotted out voicing vitriolic accusations, but they never presented any facts and documentation of a ‘rigged election’. Everyday, every hour, the ‘Russian Plot’ was breathlessly described in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Financial Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, BBC, NPR and their overseas followers in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Oceania and Africa. The great American Empire looked increasingly like a ‘banana republic’.
Like the Billionaire Soros-funded ‘Color Revolutions’, from Ukraine, to Georgia and Yugoslavia, the ‘Rainbow Revolt’ against Trump, featured grass-roots NGO activists and ‘serious leftists’, like Jill Stein.
The more polished political operatives from the upscale media used their editorial pages to question Trump’s illegitimacy. This established the ground work for even higher level political intervention: The current US Administration, including President Obama, members of the US Congress from both parties, and current and former heads of the CIA jumped into the fray. As the vote recount ploy flopped, they all decided that ‘Vladimir Putin swung the US election!’ It wasn’t just lunatic neo-conservative warmongers who sought to oust Trump and impose Hillary Clinton on the American people, liberals and social democrats were screaming ‘Russian Plot!’ They demanded a formal Congressional investigation of the ‘Russian cyber hacking’ of Hillary’s personal e-mails (where she plotted to cheat her rival ‘Bernie Sanders’ in the primaries). They demanded even tighter economic sanctions against Russia and increased military provocations. The outgoing Democratic Senator and Minority Leader ‘Harry’ Reid wildly accused the FBI of acting as ‘Russian agents’ and hinted at a purge.
The coup intensified as Trump-Putin became synonymous for “betrayal” and “election fraud”.
Hollywood and entertainment celebrities, totally sold on identity politics, have offered the Democrats and Obama, in particular, excellent cover for all his crimes and betrayals. Here, George Clooney, a clear promoter of imperialist wars, basks in the president’s attention.
As this approached a crescendo of media hysteria, President Barack Obama stepped in and called on the CIA to seize domestic control of the investigation of Russian manipulation of the US election – essentially accusing President-Elect Trump of conspiring with the Russian government. Obama refused to reveal any proof of such a broad plot, citing ‘national security’.
President Obama solemnly declared the Trump-Putin conspiracy was a grave threat to American democracy and Western security and freedom. He darkly promised to retaliate against Russia, “…at a time and place of our choosing”.
Obama also pledged to send more US troops to the Middle East and increase arms shipments to the jihadi terrorists in Syria, as well as the Gulf State and Saudi ‘allies’. Coincidentally, the Syrian Government and their Russian allies were poised to drive the US-backed terrorists out of Aleppo – and defeat Obama’s campaign of ‘regime change’ in Syria.
Trump Strikes Back: The Wall Street- Military Alliance
[dropcap]M[/dropcap]eanwhile, President-Elect Donald Trump did not crumple under the Clintonite-coup in progress. He prepared a diverse counter-attack to defend his election, relying on elite allies and mass supporters.
Trump denounced the political elements in the CIA, pointing out their previous role in manufacturing the justifications (he used the term ‘lies’) for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He appointed three retired generals to key Defense and Security positions – indicating a power struggle between the highly politicized CIA and the military. Active and retired members of the US Armed Forces have been key Trump supporters. He announced that he would bring his own security teams and integrate them with the Presidential Secret Service during his administration.
Although Clinton-Obama had the major mass media and a sector of the financial elite who supported the coup, Trump countered by appointing several key Wall Street and corporate billionaires into his cabinet who had their own allied business associations.
One propaganda line for the coup, which relied on certain Zionist organizations and leaders (ADL, George Soros et al), was the bizarre claim that Trump and his supporters were ‘anti-Semites’. This was countered by Trump’s appointment of powerful Wall Street Zionists like Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary and Gary Cohn (both of Goldman Sachs) to head the National Economic Council. Faced with the Obama-CIA plot to paint Trump as a Russian agent for Vladimir Putin, the President-Elect named security hardliners including past and present military leaders and FBI officials, to key security and intelligence positions.
The Coup: Can it succeed?
In early December, President Obama issued an order for the CIA to ‘complete its investigation’ on the Russian plot and manipulation of the US Presidential election in six weeks – right up to the very day of Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2017! A concoction of pre-cooked ‘findings’ is already oozing out of secret clandestine CIA archives with the President’s approval. Obama’s last-ditch effort will not change the outcome of the election. Clearly this is designed to poison the diplomatic well and present Trump’s incoming administration as dangerous. Trump’s promise to improve relations with Russia will face enormous resistance in this frothy, breathless hysteria of Russophobia.
Ultimately, President Obama is desperate to secure his legacy, which has consisted of disastrous and criminal imperial wars and military confrontations. He wants to force a continuation of his grotesque policies onto the incoming Trump Administration. Will Trump succumb? The legitimacy of his election and his freedom to make policy will depend on overcoming the Clinton-Obama-neo-con-leftist coup with his own bloc of US military and the powerful Wall Street allies, as well as his mass support among the ‘angry’ American electorate. Trump’s success at thwarting the current ‘Russian ploy’ requires his forming counter alliances with Washington plutocrats, many of whom will oppose any diplomatic agreement with Putin. Trump’s appointment of hardline economic plutocrats who are deeply committed to shredding social programs (public education, Medicare, Social Security) could ignite the anger of his mass supporters by savaging their jobs, health care, pensions and their children’s future.
If Trump defeats the avalanching media, CIA and elite-instigated coup (which interestingly lacks support from the military and judiciary), he will have to thank, not only his generals and billionaire-buddies, but also his downwardly mobile mass supporters (Hillary Clinton’s detested ‘basket of deplorables’). He embarked on a major series of ‘victory tours’ around the country to thank his supporters among the military, workers, women and small business people and call on them to defend his election to the presidency. He will have to fulfill some of his promises to the masses or face ‘the real fire’, not from Clintonite shills and war-mongers, but from the very people who voted for him.
Please note James Petras’s new collection of essays with Clarity Press:
THE END OF THE REPUBLIC AND THE DELUSION OF EMPIRE
ISBN: 978-0-9972870-5-9
$24.95 / 252 pp. / 2016
© Copyright 2016 by AxisofLogic.com
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James Petras is a world-renowned public intellectual. He is a retired Bartle Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada who has published extensively on Latin American and Middle Eastern political issues.Note to Commenters
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The thieves are falling out. It seems inconceivable that one from the commanding classes would want to interfere and function as the flunkey serving his own class interests. It is an inroad into their affairs that is not tolerated among the professional politician classes who feel invaded by a rank amateur. Ali Baba would have a field day with the infighting carried through by the cable news professional applauders and supported to their own detriment by many of the deluded masses who hardly see through a glass darkly that this is a shadow play performed beyond their control. The real… Read more »
The split in the establishment (and Petras superbly shows the manner of attack and defense by the factions) is between the old guard who depend on and sustain their political flunkies and the new guard who take over themselves without power brokers. It is the present trend of taking over the management rather than delegating authority. That split would be the perfect opportunity for progressives to make use of but alas, ‘it ain’t necessarily so’ (from Porgy and Bess). By their lack of solidarity and organization, progressives entertain but do not effect much.
The war criminals of the U.S. and Britain include leaders from the Bush and Obama administration in the U.S. and the Blair administration. The U.S. mainstream media spins the usual propaganda and outright lies to deceive the naive and gullible, but I have faith that the truthtellers from the non-mainstream media sources have been increasingly successful in disseminating that truth to more Americans. The many false flag events that the U.S. perpetrates, and the coups that the U.S. government has instigated with CIA backed operatives or using other countries’ so-called “rebels” or using Mossad and MI6 to assist the CIA… Read more »
The editor wishes to thank Ms Woodward for her superb note, a summation of the “world cancer” represented by this plutocratic mafia and its numerous tentacles below and above ground. —PG
It seems that from time to time the management of US Inc. has to take over from the wayward politicians that they control by funding their campaigns. Trump is the next Reagan, but maybe less grandfatherly and genially venal. His chief modus operandi is the stern uncle image who ‘speaketh the truth’. When one compares Trump in black tie with his trophy wife modeling extremely costly fashions, in one’s minds eye are reflected Reagan in crisp black tie with Nancy prancing around in expensive designer outfits. That image is not incidental to the politics of the man and Trump by… Read more »
The demonizing of Trump is entirely anti-revolutionary because he is like Reagan but the symbol of a diseased society (much like the Romanovs had to be unnecessarily eliminated as the symbols for a re-conquest by the White army). Describing him (and I quote) as: ” a narcissistic, racist, misogynist, sociopathic, mindless, scapegoating demagogue” leads nowhere. Eliminating in one form or another of individuals is an ugly by-product of undifferentiated anger that wildly wants to strike out where it knows it has no power. Strength lies in coldly calculating one’s chances, not in vituperative and weak repartee. As for how the… Read more »
Trump is truly the reductio ad absurdum of the US founding principles (like the emperors Commodus and Caracalla were for the Roman empire and its civilian freedoms), with commerce, free enterprise, individualism and free speech, all guaranteed under the the Bill of Rights but tools for oppression in a guided oligarchy. The right to exercise these freedoms rests on the status and place in the hierarchy that one occupies and they become shackles for the hoi polloi instead of equality under the law and brotherhood, which term is the laughing stock for the ruling elites. Thus decadence is measured as… Read more »